Rain washed out the T&T Red Force’s prac­tice match on Wednes­day at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va with­out a ball be­ing bowled. In­stead, the squad was forced to re­treat to the in­door prac­tice nets for a ses­sion.

They will try again on Fri­day at the same venue in which an­oth­er prac­tice match is sched­uled from 9:30 am. With rough­ly a month to go to the tour­na­ment, head coach David Fur­longe bad­ly needs some time out in the mid­dle as play­ers stake their claim for one of the 15 po­si­tions on the squad.

With COVID-19 re­stric­tions al­so lim­it­ing train­ing, Khary Pierre is hop­ing that his ex­pe­ri­ence in the 2020 Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) will serve him well go­ing in­to this tour­na­ment. Hav­ing been part of the bio-se­cure bub­ble last year with the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers, Pierre told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Wednes­day, “Just like CPL, a lot of tour­na­ments around the world has been af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic so as pro­fes­sion­al crick­eters we need to go out there and just fo­cus on play­ing crick­et.”

With a packed home sea­son of crick­et lined up for 2021 with Guardian Me­dia Sports re­port­ing that Sri Lan­ka, South Africa, Pak­istan and Aus­tralia are set to tour the Caribbean, the Parkite is aim­ing to push his way back in­to the West In­dies set-up hav­ing played three One Day In­ter­na­tion­als (ODI) and 10 T20 In­ter­na­tion­als. “That is my main aim to get back on the West In­dies team. I just want to go out there and make my per­for­mances do the talk­ing,” the left-arm-spin­ner said.

He’s been rel­ish­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to train with se­nior West In­dies play­ers such as Kieron Pol­lard, Dar­ren Bra­vo and for­mer West In­dies ODI cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo who has been around the train­ing ses­sions. “It’s al­ways good to mix the ex­pe­ri­ence with the youth. Gen­er­al­ly, we have a good team. It’s just for the boys to go out there, play as a unit and bring it home,” he said.

Pierre’s fel­low Parkites Kirstan Kallicha­ran has al­so been en­joy­ing train­ing with the se­nior play­ers. The 21-year-old doesn’t ex­pect to make the fi­nal squad that will fly to An­tigua for the tour­na­ment, but he’s been us­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow his own game. He said, “All the guys are back home so it’s a lot hard­er for me to have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to play but I’m still sat­is­fied and hap­py to be part of the train­ing camp and go­ing for­ward I can learn some­thing from them.”

<Re­gion­al 4-Day set for Bar­ba­dos, T&T>

Mean­while, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) John­ny Grave con­firmed on the Ma­son and Guest Show on the Voice of Bar­ba­dos pro­gramme on Tues­day that the board is look­ing to host two rounds of the first-class tour­na­ment af­ter East­er.

The Eng­lish­man said they are hop­ing that Bar­ba­dos and T&T will be the hosts of the tour­na­ment with the sec­ond round be­ing played here at home. He said, “As soon as we make a bit more progress with the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion and the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment and the T&T Crick­et Board and the T&T gov­ern­ment we’ll be in a po­si­tion to an­nounce that [the fix­tures] but we’re ob­vi­ous­ly liv­ing and work­ing in un­prece­dent­ed times with huge un­cer­tain­ty so this is till best-case sce­nar­ios and sub­ject to every­thing.”